Running Away
by cliffrose-acetone
Summary: A brief insight into Sherlock's life as a teenage drug addict before he became a consulting detective.
1. One

It's all gone once the high sets in.

There's the initial gentle pinch that I'm so used to it barely registers but still somehow reminds me of the first adrenaline-fueled, guilt-ridden puncture of the needle in the virgin flesh of my arm before I had any idea of the cost of keeping my mind from tearing itself apart. I didn't know what I was then, didn't have any way to cope with the chaos of my thoughts, the noise, the overcrowding of the senses. It was in the needle, the white and the flame, first inhaled before moving on to injections taken recklessly until I was enslaved by it. Without it, the demons- like smoke; dark, twisted, irresistible in their mystery- oh, the demons called by and clawed at my brain, at my skin, burned my eyes and tortured me once I was foolish enough to try to give it up. I couldn't give it up after my idiocy, after the first taste of what I believed was exotic, sophisticated, a display of the maturity that I had yet to earn. I fell into the encouragement, into the temptation, and lost the last weapon I had against everything that I thought I couldn't cope with. The death of the father who left the image of his useless younger son to blossom in his head, the brother who flourished under the arrogant pride of that father long after he was gone, the mother who broke and was still desperately trying to fix herself by the time she followed her husband to the grave. There was so much to live up to in my brother (my arch-enemy, my blood foe, the purity of light to the filth of darkness); his discipline, poise, intelligence. I had his potential but I could never refine it just as well as he could. I was brilliant, but my brother was always one step ahead. I admired him and the admiration decayed to bitter animosity before long, fueled by the desire to be better, to _be_ admired as he was. I left things behind; the friends I barely remember now from hazy, unappreciated days of barely recollected true happiness and blind childhood; my own joy and sadness and love and any other emotion that interfered with what I tried to accomplish. I only retained my fierce anger- at myself, my brother, the disdain of my father- which forced me to focus on the greater picture that I drew for myself. I buried things that I didn't bother to examine for proper sentimental value, and so I fought for perfection and lost. I was pathetic and naïve; of course I lost, completely undone with my face in the dirt and whatever reputation I had reduced to utter disgrace. I was nothing once what I tried to accomplish overwhelmed me. I was nothing once I reached for the one thing that I thought could save me. I was ruined from the second that I was foolish enough to believe that the needle points that lay in haphazard mine fields along my arm would never happen. There were scars along those pinpricks now (foolish bloody trenches with their own unique story), but as the high set in, it didn't matter. It drifts and melts away and suddenly there's nothing to worry about, nothing holding me down to reality, and I can float away childishly and pretend that every-thing's fine, that I'm not starting to forget everything that I tried for years to learn, that my mother's stopped crying over me because she only has one son now, that there're still marks of my own horror at my mistake trailing down my cheeks like the blood that's pooled in the crease of my elbow.

It's all gone once the high sets in.

**X**

I can still remember when the sound began to change. Going back, there is the memory of the gift, presented on that one Christmas morning before everything crumbled into the festering pandemonium that it became, back when I had no idea of the gravity of the instrument that I held in my hands as my parents beamed at the smile I put on my face to please them. It wasn't much to me- it was wood and strings; trivial; _nothing_- until I sighed and picked up the bow the way my father eagerly showed me, and after a few lame attempts, played my first note.

What words are there to describe the first taste of music when one realizes that it is more than just incoherent marks on lines on endless pages, more than a finite stream of sounds that are only listened to by the old, something ignored in favour of the cheap, synthetics of 'music' that dominated the world that I ignored there after? How can you describe the feeling in a single suspended note, the heart-scream and the sudden overwhelming wonder at the discovery that music is far more than just a simple, tiny word?

I excused myself then, in the hush that followed that one, piercing, painfully beautiful note, and by the time I reached my own room, I had just enough time to shut the door before I fell to my knees, my eyes staring blankly into space as I tried to understand what had happened, what I had felt, what I had just done. I curled beside my bed, bow on one side and violin on the other, and held on to that tiny moment until it began to fade. I panicked- I hadn't deciphered it yet, hadn't found the word to describe it (because there _had_ to be a word to describe- not music, but it's feeling, it's...after-effect, the aftertaste of the flavour)- and then remembered that it was still there. I looked down at that violin (my hand shook, and my chest still ached from the sudden initial lurch of my heart from the sound) and then picked up the bow again, placed her (my first violin, still waiting, sadly decaying, untouched in her case somewhere as I bleed out my idiotic self-hatred) under my chin again and played the same note.

I could list the many composers I listened to, the symphonies, melodies and movements, in a desperate attempt to catch up with the hundreds of years of beauty that I had missed, but that list would be endless and would be sadly incompetent as a result of my own inferior current knowledge of the classics. But for a while after, as I took lessons (played endlessly every chance that I could, through the pain in my fingers and even as my hand swelled from overdoing it), I neglected some things. It began my steady decent into loneliness. Nothing could compare to the better world I held in my hands, in the records that I never stopped listening to, in the dead who's creations lived on without them. No one listened with me or understood (there were better things to be done, they insisted, as I pitied them in their ignorance as they left me behind to revel in my obsessions with Bach) and I kept myself to myself for long enough that I stopped feeling even vaguely guilty about what I'd sacrificed. I had music, and that was all that mattered to me.

I never named her- musicians often name their instruments- I didn't need to. She was mine and no one else was allowed to touch her or even so much as breathe near her, and so she didn't need a name. I couldn't think of anything to name something that had shown me music. Of the few things that I loved, music was never one of them, since I had her. One doesn't love breathing.

But now I'm lying here, sprawled across the bed and slumped against the wall of my dorm while everyone else is out actually have a fucking life, trying to forget just how much of a failure I really am. I've thought about picking her up again (it's been at least a few weeks- months- a year?) but every time I do, I'm reminded of why I haven't before now. Because I ruined everything. Because I chose a syringe of filth over the untarnished beauty of a simple melody, and because of that, I'm a failure.

I keep wondering before all of those thoughts drift away into nothing, if some asshole will play her at my funeral to pay their respects or something. The idea disgusts me until it becomes weirdly hilarious, and I fall sideways onto the sheets and forget why there're tears on my face in the first place.

**X**

There was a time- a time that seems too far away to actually feel real any more (like those memories where you're playing outside, those memories you shouldn't have because you should've been too young to remember, and every time it comes back, there's this jolt and the doubt that it actually happened because it's ruined your perception of time for just a second) – when Mycroft took care of me and I let him. I looked up to him and admired him, to the point where it really irritated him. But in the end, past the facade of annoyance and exasperation, he loved me. He explained things to me (things I shouldn't ask that made people uncomfortable, why certain things were forbidden, why what we felt and what other people felt were two completely different things), let me hang around him and see what he was doing. I've deleted at least half of the things that used to matter- what he did, what he liked, the things that I did for him that were stupid but that made him smile because I was too small to understand how shitty my attempts were- or that might just be the drugs.

There was a time though, when I'd crawl into his bed after a nightmare, and he'd grumble and tell me to get out, but then fall asleep before he could really push me away. There was a time, I remember, when I didn't hate him for such a stupid, childish reason.


	2. Two

It feels like days when it all finally wears off, and I'm left feeling worse than when I started (roomate still isn't back, but he hates me anyway- after a spectacular week into term, he's discovered that I'm a despicable person to be around) and I can't say it's worth it because- look at me. I laugh at myself, before everything in my brain rattles and the laugh becomes a groan and I have to hold back the urge to vomit all over the bed (again). I lie still and try to concentrate on just breathing in and out without puking and/or losing consciousness, until I can push myself upright and reach for the glass of stagnant water waiting on the bedside table. Most of it falls on my shirt and on my bed rather than into my mouth, but it tastes like nothing but wetness anyway, so it doesn't matter.

I stare up at the ceiling and try to remember the feeling of the high, and then realize that I won't be able to, because I haven't been able to for a while. It just makes everything worse. Never better. Always worse.

**X**

There's...a week.

A few days.

A week.

A week full of days that blend into each other and don't matter (waking up and schoolwork and eating and not talking, pretending I can handle another day and trying unsuccessfully not to give in to heroin again, schoolwork and trying to stay conscious) until one day at the end of that week (a dreary, tempestuous Saturday that feels oppressive in its grays and obnoxious thunder) when a boy appears at the doorway who my old room mate (never bothered to get his name, and I don't think he ever got mine) has switched out with.

Some last name with a W, he says. A Common First Name. I'm actually sober, but I don't care enough in those first, crucial moments to pay close attention. He hovers in the middle of the room with his bag slung over his shoulder, until he turns away from me to put his clothes away. Nothing remarkable, I think, looking him over once, and then again, noting the haircut, the clothes, the stature, those books...

"I'm sorry about your grandfather," I say, just as the boy is kicking his bag under his bed. He startles.

He frowns intensely at me, taking a step away, and then falling back on the bed. "How did you know about that?"

I open my mouth to point out that I didn't _know_, it was _obvious_, when I realize that maybe it's not as obvious as it is to me. Mycroft did this, and I tried in vain to imitate him. At least, I thought it was in vain; I still exercised this skill I had from time to time, without ever really voicing my conclusions, but since Mycroft often corrected me when I tried it around him, I always thought that I wasn't good enough.

This boy was staring at me, waiting for my answer. I couldn't disappoint- or rather, I could, but it was mostly for my own benefit that I explained. I was probably wrong anyway. Who cared? He'd hate me soon enough and leave like all the others.

"The way you hold yourself, you haircut and clothes...strict upbringing." I frowned, trying to gather my thoughts again as the haze of my earlier high still persisted. "Probably military. Your father's a military man, used those influences in disciplining you, probably as he was. Your books...the first few are your fathers- new; unopened; brought with you to avoid him suspecting you of disrespect. The age and condition of the others suggest they had a previous owner, and also as they're medical books that you couldn't get unless you were a doctor yourself or someone you know is, they're a gift. Some of the pages have been folded at the corners before, but you've used a bookmark to avoid that, so you don't want to ruin them. The way you treat them- carefully, sentimentally as if they carry your own memories- maybe the person that gave them to you is someone important." I paused. He still stared at me- he looked slightly horrified, or maybe that was just me. "There's a sadness when you hold them, rather than the usual pride you'd expect in being given something with valuable. They're old, expensive. So he's dead then, and that's the last you have of him. He was a doctor, and inspired you to become one in his memory. You wouldn't have worked to get into a place like this if you weren't serious about it."

There's a long silence, where I expect him the get up and leave with some excuse (water, fresh air, going to call some random person in my family who doesn't actually exist, be right back!) or to sneer at everything I got wrong (which I assume to be most everything.)

"That's...that's fucking amazing," he says instead, and it's my turn to startle and be amazed. I want to say something ('but it was obvious', just be a dick) but I can't because I'm too surprised to say _anything_. And for a tiny second, I'm afraid that he's just taking the piss, another prank from the rest of the boys who absolutely hate my guts with enough hellfire to make Lucifer proud, but one look at the wonder on his face shows otherwise.

"Yeah," I say eventually, looking away from the excitement in his eyes that I just know I'm going to disappoint. "Thanks."

**X**

His name is Sam, I find out later.

Jim.

John.

Kyle.

Samuel. His name is Sam. Sam Walther.

He's the first person to ever listen to my deductions and not want to punch me in the face. He's amazed by me, and I'm amazed by his amazement. We're never exclusively friends exactly- the only time we ever talk outside of our shared room is when there aren't enough people around to really spread rumors (since being in my company automatically turns you into some sort of freak). It's enough that I'm not completely alone, but I might as well be, since half of the company seems to be out of pity. I have no else, so I hang on to him whenever I can. I'm his party trick most of the time, if he's got others around who have the patience to listen to me speak, if I haven't already humiliated them. Sam was the popular one who got along with almost everyone he talked to. He got the top marks and the friends and the girls and graduated with a wonderful shinning career in front of him. I'm not actually sure how I even got into uni with how messed up I was by the end of our last year, but I think it was some combination of my brother's exasperation and his bullying me into working hard enough to scrape through.

A day after we all graduated, Walther was murdered.

It was the first case after making the drug mistake, the first one that lifted me out of that self-pitying fog and woke me up a little. I read about Sam's death like everyone else, but with considerably less compassion than most others. Amidst the fake tears and the sad faces and the many voices who claimed that Samuel was a beautiful person- divine and almost angelic in the imagined virtue manifested by the grief of people who barely knew him- I knew better. I _saw _ it better. He could be manipulative and abusive, angry, wrathful (there were certain incidents that he was involved in when we were in school that no one dared to really think about after he died), shallow in some cases, and narcissistic. I didn't care as much as everyone else, and I suppose that gave me an advantage. I was the one who noticed the points in his _suicide_ that led the police to classify it as a murder, as it should have been in the first place. It wasn't easy, getting my evidence noticed, but I had my ways.

A week after he died, I picked up my violin again.


End file.
